Muckracker: Looting it dry, brick by brick

By Muckracker | 5h ago

As they were winding up the looting frenzy in the construction sector, another frontier was being opened — the Presidential Hospital Rehabilitation Programme, under which billions of dollars would have to be salted away.

WHEN this part of the world got colonised by the British in 1890, imperialist Cecil John Rhodes established a Loot Committee to facilitate plunder of conquered land and its people, and it pillaged everything along its path, from land, minerals, livestock, labour — anything.

This was perfectly understandable because this is what colonisation of certain races of people in certain parts of the world by people of certain races from certain parts of the world was all about.

It was a clearly well-defined dog-eat-dog affair. Well, most of the fundamental aspects of colonialism still exist to this very day and are always at play at various levels globally and geopolitically. It should be perfectly understandable.

What is not understandable is when those who claim to have liberated a country from this yoke of colonialism and imperialism repeat — to all intents and purposes — the very same things that those that they fought away considered their core business.

Though not surprised at all, Muckraker is pointing this out because it is now quite obvious that our Owner & Co have since formed their own Loot Committee to plunder the very same country and people that they claim to love to the extent of dying for them.

Last month, Youth minister Tinoda Machakaire was made the natural errands boy to prime the system for a kick-start to this new looting when he uncharacteristically addressed our Owner via the social media, pretending to be drawing his important attention to the reality that the situation in public hospitals was dire.

Yet unbeknown to the gullible Zimbos, some offshore shelf firms had already established, through the usual fronts, Cde Tempter Paul Tungwarara — the so-called Special Presidential Investment Adviser for the UAE — and Cde Wicked Munodaani Chivharo.

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Then Zimbos were made to start their week with a skit in which our Owner made a show of making unannounced visits to Sally Mugabe and Parirenyatwa hospitals supposedly to see for himself the levels of his own incompetence, and as usual, Cde Joji was on hand to dutifully try and make fools of everyone.

“Our role as Presidential staffers was to note areas requiring immediate, medium and long-term interventions, and they were just too many, in order to help shape effective health delivery policy,” he cooed in a statement posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account.

“It was clear from the visit that the whole health delivery hierarchy needed attention. Failures at basic primary levels like clinics and district hospitals transmitted themselves all the way to referral hospitals, leading to a system which is creaking from an overload, disrepair and fresh investments,” Joji added.

But Muck and everyone, who has been a Zimbo long enough, know that the real motive is not to revive the comatose public health system, but to loot as much as is unashamedly possible, hence these under-the-table tenders.

The health sector is just but the latest looting front to be opened, because this is simultaneously happening on countless other fronts — farmland, urban land, ZiG scam, gold-coin scam, minerals, wildlife, you name it!

This is because the loot committee is racing against time, everything that is not fixed to the ground has to be carted away to safety as soon as yesterday.

Talk of the benefits of the liberation struggle — the unfettered right to loot — (gold) brick by (gold) brick! If there is one person, who perfectly deserves to be charged for criminal abuse of office, then it is that one, and no other!

Welcome to the cult

Muck would like to welcome Kudakwashe Tagwirei into the cult that is Zanu PF following his recent co-option into the party’s Central Committee as this could help speed up things up as this whole thing ought to destroy itself by collapsing from within and there is no better way of quickening this process than by trying to impose a rank outsider.

“From being, for a long time, a dormant but committed Zanu PF party cadre, loyally working quietly and outside the public limelight or glare, holding some low-ranking position in some Zanu PF Party District under Harare Province, your recent co-option into the Zanu PF Central Committee is a breath of fresh air and will certainly be impactful to Zanu PF’s political fortunes in Harare City and perhaps in other urban settings as well,” a statement by the party’s legal affairs secretary Patrick Chinamasa said.

“I am, of course, referring to Dr Kudakwashe Tagwirei, who has recently been co-opted into the Zanu PF Central Committee by the Zanu PF Harare Provincial Council,” Chinamasa continued.

“I have no hesitation in assuring those of us who are sceptics that Harare Province will never be the same again.”

That Chinamasa had a message for sceptics confirms what Muck and others have always prayed for … that the more members of the cult who are disgruntled, the better.

And we are made to believe that the new entrant is being groomed as a good stand-by, just in the unlikely case that the current illegal plot to extent our Owner’s term indefinitely encounters an unforeseen iceberg. We sincerely hope the “straight jacket” ideals died with those who made the pronouncements.

Squad of questionables

In the aftermath of our Owner’s so-called unannounced hospital visits, done in the conspicuous absence of the Health minister Douglas Mombeshora or his deputy Sleiman Kwidini, reports suggest that our Owner could be on the cusp of bringing Obadiah “DJ Biscuit” Moyo back to head the ministry from which he was fired in July 2020 after being caught with his fingers stuck in the Covid cookies jar.

Moyo, a proud holder of a string of fake qualifications, is a perfect fit for this slot in a government in which almost the other next person is a scam in their own right.

When the leader is someone, who is questionable all-round, they certainly need to have as many people as possible they can get with equally questionable credentials around them, and that ensures that everyone is working for mutual good, without anyone looking down on the other.

And as for these quacks, we are so blessed as a country for we have such a wondrous over-supply of them under the Second Republic, from our Owner himself down to the lowest public official — there are lots of question marks.

Maybe that is what made “Dr” Walter Mzembi green with envy so much as to embolden him to negotiate his return, seeing that he was losing out in this contest for fake-ness because of his continued self-exile.

Meanwhile, in even a half-normal country, ours in certain not even remotely one such, when you are treated the way Mombeshora, his deputy and the entire Health Services Board were this week, when you were doing the miracle of doing your job to the best of ability without resources, this could be the time to call it quits — just resigning en-masse because there is no better time to feel redundant.

But this does not happen, never in the hereabouts, because when people join a cult, membership is for life. One cannot simply opt out just like that. It is never a done thing.

The dirtier one is, the better a fit they are in our Owner’s scheme of things. Wasn’t Cde MoreHardy brought back after previously scandalising himself away?

Only last week, we were pardoning a former judge who fled the country some two decades ago after being convicted of corruption. This is because in our own world, corruption, looting and some such practices are actually noble acts that deserve honour and celebration.